


Monody

by Euregatto



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Friends to Lovers to Enemies, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Pre-Infinity War, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-13 03:35:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18932584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euregatto/pseuds/Euregatto
Summary: It wasn’t hard, per say, to kill the Ebony Maw. Stephen Strange thought every instance leading up to it was worse, two sets of domino effects falling in adjacent lines. He was the only one who knew too much about the physics of collision: not what happens after but what causes the impact, how inaction didn’t stop reaction, that turning away from it didn’t prevent anything but the visual cue. The time stone had taught him that.Not that Maw’s death mattered much, anyway—Thanos still won.





	Monody

**Author's Note:**

> For Alex and Jasmine

  

  

It wasn’t hard, per say, to kill the Ebony Maw. Stephen Strange thought every instance leading up to it was worse, two sets of domino effects falling in adjacent lines. He was the only one who knew too much about the physics of collision: not what happens after but what causes the impact, how inaction didn’t stop reaction, that turning away from it didn’t prevent anything but the visual cue. The time stone had taught him that.

Not that Maw’s death mattered much, anyway—Thanos still won.

   

  

  

  

The thing was, they had a history. It was as fleeting as the average human life span, the blink of a blink of a blink to the universe, yet in his perspective, in a moment of singularity, of the mathematical coincidence of three billion people rolling six billion dice, it became everything. Strange was in his sanctum, doing just that. Calculating. Contemplating the butterfly effect in other timelines, the odds of a hurricane forming on an east coast worlds away, how the hurricane would swing back around and kill the butterfly, who by all definitions of a technicality, was a god.

Then there was someone standing in his foyer. The man—an alien, ashen skin and pallid hair, traced his forefinger across the lip of the Cauldron of Ancients in wonder. There was no indication to how, exactly, he had gotten in, as if he had simply phased through the very foundation and re-solidified.

“Whoever you are,” Strange said, “you should leave.”

The visitor drew his hands together, tips of his fingers pressed flat. The smirk on his face was not one of someone who smiled often. “Hear me and rejoice, Sorcerer Supreme, for word of your—oh.” His words stalled, expression flatlining. “You are not the Sorcerer Supreme.”

Strange glimpsed him once over. “I beg your pardon?”

“The Sorcerer Supreme. I was informed that she was—”

“Your sources have outdated information. _I_ am the Sorcerer Supreme”—Strange struck his wrist together and rings of energy formed gauntlets around him—"and this is your last chance to identify yourself before I drop you into the vacuum of space.”

“I am the Ebony Maw.” He inclined his head, some sort of polite nod. “I have journeyed here seeking the knowledge of the Sorcerer Supreme. I care little who serves the role, so long as they are competent.”

“Then what do you want?”

The Maw gestured his arms to the sanctum. “This,” he said. “Knowledge. I seek the answers you provide.” Something in the air shifted and ice ran thick through Strange’s veins. “You have my word, I did not traverse the galaxy to harm you, only to learn all I can. I even brought a pourboire.”

Strange lowered his guard. “Present it, then.”

Maw held out his arm and unfurled his fingers. Shards of metal lifted away from his palm. Twirled in circles. “Algemamite,” he said with a grin. “A rare substance you cannot obtain from anywhere but the forged dust of a dead star, with the quality of metal yet softer. I allow you the opportunity to study it.”

Strange gestured out his hand. The fragments danced through the air, from one palm to another, and settled. “All right, Ebony Maw,” he said. “You have my council.” Though now he was thinking of butterfly wings, glistening in the sunlight, and how violently they snapped in two without making a sound.

   

  

  

  

Afterwards, they talked about everything that wasn’t knowledge Strange couldn’t share—probabilities of falling stars, the trajectory of moons, the various applications of leaves for wounds, burns, illness, but they avoided telling the other personal details. Childhood memories triggered by the scent of mint, cedar, copper. Preferences for color. Parents.

Maw was drinking tea for the first time when he asked, “What happened to your hands, Sorcerer?”

“I was a different person then.”

“People do not change.” There was an honesty in his voice that was hard as ice. “Personalities are adaptable, hatred can be released, lessons will alter how one approaches the subject—but that which makes a person who they are will never deter. What stimulates them, makes them happy, sad, angry. How they arrange a space. How they like their tea.”

“I was a different person,” Strange repeated.

Brackets of sunlight fell across the table. Maw opened his palm to one to catch its warmth. “Then perhaps you are an exception to the rule. Strange, indeed.”

He finished his tea, bid the Sorcerer Supreme farewell, and left.

   

   

  

  

Except Strange knew that wouldn’t be their last, or only, encounter. Although calling it that implies it was an accident. That was the first lesson he had learned, after the crash but before he began to study the mystic arts—there were no accidents, only statistical improbabilities of it happening _now_ , and if it didn’t occur in this world it would elsewhere, this timeline or the next. Inevitable.

   

  

    

  

Then Maw did return. Six months, three days, fifteen hours, twelve minutes and twenty-two seconds later. He looked impossibly older, had new scars, more frown lines and deeper eyes. Frustration set into his features. When Strange came down the stairs to greet him, his expression changed subtly—softened, unsmiling but at least, no longer deep in perplexing thought.

“I must apologize,” Maw said without hesitation. He sounded winded, shaken. “I have been referring to you as the Sorcerer Supreme all this time.”

Strange furrowed his brow. “Is that not what I am?”

“That, and more.” And then, “I am an absolute fool for allowing this information to linger under my very nose.”

“Excuse me for being the bearer of bad news, but you don’t _have_ a nose, Maw.”

A gray hand, decorated with grayer rings, stretched out in gesture. “The Time Stone, around your neck. Had I realized you possessed such infinite power, in plain sight—” Strange shifted. Lifted his hands, ready to defend, but Maw instead said to him, “I wish to study it.”

“The stone stays with me. Always.”

“Ah, yes—that is not what I meant. Consider my fascination that of equivalency to all I’ve asked already.”

Strange didn’t lower his guard this time. He didn’t think he ever would again.

   

  

  

  

However, the Maw’s questions were appropriate. Strange demonstrated practical applications of spells, talked about—the dangers of undoing and redoing, timeslips, distortions, quantum realities and theories. Maw remained for days, his energy unexhaustive as if sleep was inconsequential. Strange allowed his physical form to rest in-between nights and astral projected himself to continue teaching, intrigued by his own handiwork.

They let details slip this time—small talk of food, ethics, life beyond Earth and on it, he learned the Maw was almost a hundred in human years and told him about the concepts of celebrations, let him try _cake_ , and _watermelon_ —studying each other like foreign maps, brushing fingers on book spines. The Maw would leave and return the next day and linger for another week. Leave and return. Linger. Share stories and enjoy a conversation with Wong over this delicious sliced sweet called _strawberries_. Leave and return, for almost three full months before they bumped arms in the library, and became suddenly too close.

They were too _close_.

Strange flexed his hands in apprehension. “What is happening here?”

“You ask far too many questions, Stonekeeper,” Maw said as if they hadn't been here a dozen times over, as if they wouldn't continue to be here another hundred. “Look forward, if you must. You have the capability.”

Strange didn't admit he already had. Seeing the futures, all their individual possibilities--there was something dishonest about retracing the history they had yet to experience, all its chances and outcomes, and still knowing where it ended.

What he couldn't answer was why, so he didn’t dwell on it. He let the Maw get closer. He let everything afterwards happen, too. Dropped clothing, the desperation in their hands; Strange kept the stone close because in one version of a reality that hadn’t happened (yet), Maw stole the whole device—and when the cloak of levitation pooled to the floor, it distantly occurred to him that it had never once moved on its own.

   

  

  

  

They didn’t talk after it was all over. Maw dressed silently, oblivious to the code of conduct with these situations, but that was merely a human conceptualization of how things worked, so Strange took no offense.

“I have overstayed my welcome,” Maw said dismally.

“You haven’t.”

“I am flattered by your hospitality. I meant that I must return before a search party comes to find my remains.”

Strange didn’t ask, _Who, Maw, who is coming?_

“Regardless, I hope to see you soon,” Maw added, and turned away.

“You will.”

“I know.”

It was the last time they saw each other before the ships descended upon the earth to claim the stones. Before he was jammed against a wall with bricks and asked, “Did you miss me, Stonekeeper?” Before there was no other way. Before they lost.

Strange wasn’t surprised by any of it.

He knew where the dice had fallen long ago, and that would forever be his fate.

  

  


End file.
